A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how to use blogs to build your ebusiness. Today, I want to do the same for Twitter.

Again, I will make it clear from the outset that I’m no social media expert. I am writing from common sense and instincts here.

Twitter has gone mainstream. Everyone’s talking about it; it’s all over the media and companies are falling over themselves to get involved. Name any company, from the global giants to the local taco business. We have the celebrities, and we also have the average Joe’s. Everyone is going Twitter-crazy.

Business people with limited budget and resource will often ask whether they should use Twitter: what will it do for them, how should they use it, and is it worth the time involved? Is it a good Internet marketing tool?

For a small business, using Twitter is more about customer or prospect engagement than advertising or branding. However, by engaging customers and building a rapport, your brand becomes even more visible.

Twitter – like all social media - is all about creating conversations, rather than pushing out a one-way message. It can be an incredibly useful way of engaging with customers, prospects or influencers such as analysts or journalists or even your critics.

But as with any activity, assess the merits of using it before you jump in. Ask yourself the right questions.  What would be your main objective? Who are the people you want to reach? Are they (or their influencers) using Twitter (or are they likely to start soon - remember, it’s a fast-growing platform)? And do you want to start two-way discussions with them? Do you have the time to facilitate this two-way discussion in a consistent and sustainable way?

If the answer to these is no, then perhaps Twitter is not for you.

But if you are interested in talking to (not at) your audiences, then Twitter offers a simple, effective way for you to engage with and respond to people, really fast.

Using the search.twitter.com tool, you can find out what customers or prospects think about a company, or issue. It gives you the opportunity to respond directly to ideas and complaints; thank people for positive feedback; test new ideas for products or services; keep your target audiences up to date with news; or just keep involved with what people are doing in your industry. The good thing is that it can all be fun!

The best part about using Twitter is that it is free!

If you are going to get involved with Twitter, make sure you do it properly. Don’t bore people to death with what you had for breakfast, or use it as a glorified RSS feed. Your tweets should have a personal feel to them. No one wants some endless and meaningless RSS feed from your website, forum etc.

Send tweets about things that your audience will be interested in, and people interested in your area, industry, niche etc’ll soon follow you.

Tweet regularly, but not obsessively. Don’t pest people with your tweets. Think of it like a conversation at a party: no one likes the person who says nothing, nor the person who just can’t seem to shut up!

You can follow on Twitter at:
http://twitter.com/ebusinessnames

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Microsoft has unexpectedly launch their new search engine ahead of schedule. Bing.com is the new face of search and will replace Live.com. Searches from Live are already being redirected to Bing.com.

Microsoft is quoted on saying:

”Bing is specifically designed to build on the benefits of today’s search engines but begins to move beyond this experience with a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business”.

Although Bing is not Live Search, it is somewhat based on it.

It will be interesting to see how well Bing does in comparison to its predecessor Live, and whether it will attract long-term users, rather than tyre-kickers. However, the reception on Twitter has been reasonably positive.

Already people are comparing it with Google. It does seem to work much better than Google for finding real product info and reviews, where Google’s results are loaded with spam and all sorts of price comparison rubbish.

But in most respects, Google still rules for the moment. Bing is an incomplete beta, and while it’s looking impressive, it’s not yet an actual match for Google.

Microsoft knows perfectly well that it’s going to take it “years and years and years” (in Steve Ballmer’s words) to get anywhere in search, if it ever does.

Microsoft will have to overtake Yahoo first. So, comparisons with Google are a bit misguided at present. In reality, Bing is competing with Yahoo and Ask to be the leading Google alternative.

Microsoft PR reckons Bing is “the sound of found” but the common joke is that it stands recursively for Bing Is Not Google.

Tighten your seat belts as we are definitely in for a ride with online search. Let the competition begin!

I will declare at the very outset of this post that I am not an expert on blogging or social media or whatever fancy terms that are flying about out there.

When God created me, he gave me a big head and stuffed a brain in it. That is what I use. There is nothing like good old common sense.

Most of my blogging here on eBusinessDomains.com domain blog is nothing more than common sense chatter, rather than any “expert” or trained professional analysis.

Blogs are great resources, and with software like WordPress that is so readily available, starting and maintaining a blog is relatively easy and cheap.

A blog can help to drive traffic to your website. Blogs are designed to ping the search engines immediately after you make a post, and as such your new article will be indexed in the search engines within minutes.

Unlike regular content pages, blog pages also have XML/RSS feeds, which notify your subscribers whenever a new post has been made on your blog. This helps your website to maintain a constant flow of repeat visitors.

Blogs are also interactive, as they also allow readers to leave comments and participate in the discussion. This results in user-generated content for your website. This can also help with your website traffic, and even with SEO.

From a website visitor’s point of view, I personally use blogs to evaluate a website and its products and services. If a website has a blog, it gives me a clear indication that the site is being maintained, it is current, and that the owners are committed to their products and services. I get this sense of security just by seeing that the website has an active blog.

I then proceed to use the blog’s content to analyse the quality of the website’s product and services. I look at the authority with which the blog is written. Does the author know much about their service/product niche or industry? Do they provide current and relevant information?

This is extremely important for SEO experts and Internet marketers who are trying to sell ebooks and related services. The authority that they display on their blogs will give me an indication as to if their ebooks, products and/or services are worth buying.

Another really important way in which I use blog to analyse a website’s product and services is to look at how long the blog has been around. This helps to judge if the website is an established player in their niche, and whether or not they are some Johnny-come-lately wannabes.

In accountancy and business studies, the very first thing that you will learn is that the business has a separate identity from its owners. This is so important, as this really is the very basis and foundation of double entry accounting, especially with the treatment of capital from the owners. Never mind this paragraph .

However, what I’m trying to say here is that it is best to leave you personal life out of your blogging, especially if you maintain a corporate blog. Customers do indeed want a personal feel to the service that they get, but that does not mean you should bring all sorts of personal drama into your business.

Suppose you wish to sell the website/ebusiness in the future, would the new owner be comfortable with all of your unrelated personal stories scattered across the blog? Maintain blogs that are professional and transferable.

One thing that I see a lot of bloggers doing is having all sorts of warfare (sometimes really nasty exchange of words) with some of the visitors that leave comments on their blogs.

Now, you have to understand that in everything you do, whether in your personal life or in business, some people will love you for one thing, and some will hate your guts for the very said thing.

You can’t afford to get caught playing the popularity game. Business is business. Focus on the customers who will actually spend money with you. The people who leave nasty comments will NEVER buy anything from you. NEVER. Don’t waste precious time on these payer-haters, nay-sayers and hypocrites.

Focus on serving the needs of the people who already got money to spend and would be willing to spend some with you. There is no point in seeking and maintaining popularity that cannot be converted to cash.

We have just redesigned the eBusinessDomains.com website, and we are now having new banners and marketing materials prepared. I have been short-listing a few blogs that I think are worth advertising with.

Over the past few weeks, I have had to remove at least 2 blogs from this list as they expressed unnecessary bias or views that were just not acceptable in my opinion. The funny thing is, these blogs are heavily dependent on banner ad sales for their income.

Whether or not you depend on banner ad sales, you should not risk eliminating or isolating customers. Just one stupid blog post could spell disaster for your business.

I will end by saying, blog in a professional, unbiased and sensible way. Blog responsibly. Use blogs to build your brands. Don’t let your blogging efforts destroy your ebusiness.

We are now just over a week away from launching a brand new online presence. We are excited about it, as we will be taking a brand new direction in how we go about our business.

We are now seeking quality content relating to ALL areas of online business activities. We are aiming to provide an unlimited library of relevant information, tips, articles, content, etc. that will assist people in building their ebusinesses.

We will keep the main thing the main thing (commercial domains) but we want to give our clients and readers the full package. We don’t want to just sell clients the best commercial domain name, but we want to give them the tools and information needed to launch and grow their ebusiness.

If you are an expert in the following areas, then you might be interested:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Internet Marketing
Branding & Brand Management
Business Finance
Web Design
Web Development
Adsense/Adword and other PPC Advertising
Affiliate Marketing
Lead Generation
Offline Marketing
Business Start-up Advice and Coaching
Business Management Skills
Legal/Business Tips
Marketing Tools
Email Marketing
Website Monetization
Online Business Tools
Press and Public Relations
International Business
Technology Trends
And all other topics relating to online businesses

We believe that there is a wealth of information out there. So we are not going to offer payment for articles at this time.

For each article/blog post, we will give you a full bio at the beginning of each post. Your name, background, website, Twitter account, and any product or service that you want to mention. These links will be permanent and the article will stay published for as long as it is still relevant.

Our expertise is in the domain industry. Although any successful ebusiness starts with a quality domain name, we understand very well that obtaining real success online requires an in-depth knowledge of a wide variety of subject matters.

This is where you come in. What is your expertise? Here is you chance to get more exposure to your business and services.You can submit as many articles as you wish. Content is king. You can also submit multi-part articles (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV etc.). Articles must be original. Our readers here at eBusinessDomains.com are used to quality well-written articles, so if your article gets published here, then that would say a lot about you!

I would be happy to write domaining articles (original) for your site if you wish.

Email us at content[at]ebusinessdomains.com to submit your articles or to discuss this further. Looking forward to hearing from you!!

If you are planning on launching an ebusiness niche website, it will be vital for you to buy a niche domain name.

A lot of planning and decision-making will be involved in the design and development of an ebusiness niche website. You will have to decide what type of site to build, how content will me management, which blogging system to use (if any), which affiliate products to promote, where to place Adsense links, how much advertisement space to sell and how to generate fresh content on a regular basis.

If you are really excited about your niche website project, then you will have fun doing all of the above. However, when all is said and done, if you do not get traffic to your website, then the whole process would have been a waste of time.

There are quite a few ways to get traffic to your website. However, I’m just going to illustrate here how you can gain highly targeted traffic from search engines with the use of keyword-rich niche domain names.

Let us first look at organic search results. This is traffic that comes from search engines, such as Google when people search using keywords or topics related to your ebusiness niche.

This traffic is highly profitable as it is free. There are literally hundreds of search engines, but the most popular ones are Google, Yahoo, MSN, AskJeeves and AOLSearch.

If your domain name consists of the keywords for your ebusiness niche and you build a keyword-rich website, then you will have a great chance of ranking high in the search engines. Search engines are really concerned about relevance. When they send a visitor to your website for the search term “shoes”, they want to be sure that the visitor finds something about “shoes”. Having a keyword-rich domain name will assist the search engines in determining the relevance of your website.

If you have no skills in search engine optimisation (SEO), then you could either get an ebook written by one of the experts or obtain the services of a SEO expert to optimise your website for the keywords related to your ebusiness niche.

Search engine experts have varied opinions on the many things that affect search engine rankings. But it is really a no-brainer that having a keyword-rich niche domain name for an optimised website will help boost high search engine rankings.

The other popular method of driving targeted traffic to your website is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisement. This is a very huge topic, but I will only focus on the use of keyword-rich niche domain names.

As the term suggest, with PPC you simply pay for clicks. You advertise with ad services like Google, who will display your ads on their search engines when people search for the keywords that you have specified, and you pay each time your ad is clicked on by the visitor.

Now in a nutshell, when setting up your ad campaign, you specify how much you are willing to pay for each click. Normally, the ads are displayed with the highest bidder placed on top. In the case of Google, these ads appear to the right of the search results. The ads with the highest Cost Per Click (CPC) bids will be placed on top, and will appear on page one of the search results, while the ads with lower bids will be shown on the other pages.

However, with that been said, there are other factors that determine where your PPC ads are shown, and how much you pay for each click. With Google, it may not just be a matter of the highest bidder gets the top spot.

Google Adwords for example, uses is the Quality Score of your website to determine the cost of each click and the placement of the PPC ad. Your Quality Score depends on the relevance of your site to the keywords that you are bidding on.

The intention here is to prevent websites advertising “shoes” and then end up sending visitors to sites selling “houses”, or even “pornography”. A keyword-rich domain name will help your website to obtain a higher Quality Score, which will result in lower PPC costs, and better ad placements.

You have an advantage when your domain name contains the keywords that you are bidding on.

Lower cost + better placements = more profits.